Saturday, July 31, 2010

please have a seat

i took off for jiffy lube this morning and could not figure out why traffic was so bad that i needed a can opener to get through these normally free and easy streets. then i saw why. caravans of u-hauls, loiterers, yard sales, colossal deposits of crap and a stupefying number of abandoned sofas were plugging up the passage. that's because today is moving day. and it's not just any moving day, but the most important one on any college campus - july 31, when the departing riffraff clean house and dump it on their front lawns to make room for the new riffraff. if there was ever a day to watch this town open its overcoat and air out its goods, today was it. i forsook the oil change and went on a sofa tour instead.

I found out how many hideous sofas are looking in my neighbors' basements after a bit of flooding a few years back brought them all out onto the tree lawns for rubbish day. Who knew the world was full of so much upholstered ugliness?

I have sat on many a street-sofa in the past 4 years ... gosh those cushions have seen a lot of unspeakable things. Mixed with beer stains and cigarette/hookah burns. Mmm the perfect place to pass out face-down on after a long night of riffraffin'...

We locals of Boston DREAD move-IN day for the colleges(and there's a LOT of them), which is coming up in a few weeks. Traffic is completely clogged and roads become virtually impassible. (when I was young...I used to move in barefoot uphill...)

Why don't college couches ever look any different? If these things get dumped as often as we've all seen at least since our college careers 20 years ago, why do these styles still exist? It's bizarre to me. I think you could take in any style, and it would re-emerge 4 years later looking like one of these. p.s. now I know why parents never want to set foot in their kids' college apts. these are frickin' gross!

Ha! I caught myself unconsciously veering slightly from one side of the street to the other this morning as I drove down Kentucky and Tennessee, my curiosity drawn to each haphazard pile. What were all these things that seemed so important to keep until the last day they lived in that house? This is always one of the strangest times of the year in this town!